Sarah PAC still not staffed up

Sarah Palin’s political committee spent $673,000 in the first half of the year raising money and building a supporter list that could translate into a small donor army if Palin runs for president. But the PAC did little to bolster an overstretched staff that would need significant reinforcements to handle the rigors of a presidential campaign.

In fact, a report filed Thursday afternoon with the Federal Election Commission shows that Sarah PAC continues to rely on a small inner circle of staffers, supplemented by short-term help from a motley network of supporters and neighbors that includes Palin’s parents, Chuck and Sally Heath.

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The former Alaska governor’s parents received $3,200 from the PAC in January for “correspondence and card mailing.” Likewise, the mother-daughter team of Marilyn and Tiffany Lane of Wasilla and Anchorage, Alaska, respectively, collected a combined $28,000 for part-time clerical work, while another part-timer Anahita Nemat of Calabasas, Calif., collected $11,000 for clerical work and correspondence.

Those payments were in addition to Sarah PAC’s small, but dedicated full-time staff, including speechwriter and Palin Internet defender Rebecca Mansour (who was paid $48,000 in the first six months of the year), chief of staff Michael Glassner (who received $50,000 since coming on board to bolster the staff in February), fundraising consultant Tim Crawford ($90,000), researcher Andrew Davis ($45,000), and conservative coalitions liaison Pam Pryor ($36,000), among others.

The report reflects Palin’s foreign policy adviser switch, with final fees paid to Randy Scheunemann’s Orion Strategies firm, and the commencement of payments to Hoover Institution fellow Peter Schweizer, who received $15,000 from the PAC since coming on board in April.

But there don’t appear to have been any other significant additions to Sarah PAC’s staff, which at times has struggled to keep up with the demands associated with Palin’s political travels and activity.

All told, payments to consultants and individuals working full or part time for Sarah PAC appear to total about $511,000, out of the total of $1.6 million that the PAC spent in the first six months of the year.